


No, This Once I Will Be Heard

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Series: Adopted Prompts [10]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Child Death, Clone Suicide Post 66, Deathfic, Gen, Haunting, Order 66, The Dead Get their Comeuppance, Vader's Miserable, Vindictive Ending?, in a big way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 04:58:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15163175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: Anakin intends to slaughter every last one of Obi-Wan's family members, in order to "protect" Anakin's own family.Obi-Wan is in the Temple during Operation Knightfall, and he has something to say about what's about to happen. Anakin will not be able to ignore him this time.





	No, This Once I Will Be Heard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yulerule](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yulerule/gifts).



> Yulerule Prompt: You write a lot of bastard, unrepentant, selfish, narcissistic, not-very-redeemable Anakin. The reason many of your stories hurt is because Obi-Wan loves him utterly, anyway. And we feel for Obi-Wan. Can you write a story where Obi-Wan gets his own back? Where he stands up and isn't a victim?
> 
> Fair Warning: It turned rather more grim than I at first anticipated, while writing. I certainly think Obi-Wan gets his own back, but my perspective, as always, is just a bit different from a more usual meaning of the phrase... Hopefully this suits.

 

Anakin didn't expect to return to the Temple, 501 st  in tow, to find the Temple locked down tight.

He certainly didn't expect a hologram of Obi-Wan to form on the front step.

“You look surprised to see me alive,” Obi-Wan said, his voice quiet. “Or perhaps that we will not lie down and die, simply because it is convenient for you.”  
Anakin glared at him.

Palpatine had wanted this done quickly and quietly. Storming the Temple? That would require siege weapons, perhaps even orbital bombardment, and _nothing_ could keep that quiet.

“If you're going to slaughter us, you're going to have to do it before the eyes of the whole galaxy. Not in dark corners, not with your hood over your face, not with the greeting of a friend. If you're going to burn our home and kill our children, it will not be in secret.”  
“ _We_ don't have children,” Anakin pointed out.

Obi-Wan's gaze did not waver. “I can see that, now. So tell me why, Anakin. Why did Cody try to murder me? Why does Rex have a vacant look in his eye? Why is Jesse muttering _good soldiers follow orders_ just like Tup?”

Anakin turned and glared at the swaying trooper. “Silence!”

An audible click said Jesse had snapped his mouth shut.

“You belong at my side,” Anakin said, holding back his anger as he looked to Obi-Wan again. “Your loyalty is to _me._ If your loyalty is to an _organization,_ over your loved ones, then what _are_ you?”  
Obi-Wan's face twisted. “An _organization_ ? I have felt my _brothers and sisters dying_ without anyone to help them, _alone,_ butchered by beings they loved and trusted. I can feel men who wanted only to keep them safe, _breaking apart_ as they realize what they've been _forced to do._ The _heartbreak_ that is shattering across this galaxy is happening to _real people,_ Anakin. _My_ people. Why would you think I would stand by and say nothing?”

“If you won't do whatever it takes to save Padmé's life, then you don't love me. You're just another enemy.”

“How is murdering my family going to save yours? You're killing the beings _most skilled_ in healing. The ones _sworn_ to save innocent life if at all possible. The ones who would fight tooth and claw to save Padmé's life, simply because it's the _right thing to do._ ”

“If you throw your lot in with traitors, I cannot be responsible for what becomes of you.” Why couldn't Obi-Wan be reasonable, _just for once_?

“Anakin, I loved Qui-Gon dearly, and I would give so much of myself to bring him back. But I _would not harm your wife and child_ to do so. Why is that too much to ask in return? Why is your family sacred, but mine is _nothing_ but _potential sacrifices_ to get what you want?”

“I _will_ save Padmé. You will _not_ stop me.”

“She's smart, Anakin. I wonder how long you can keep her from looking too close at what you're doing here tonight. You may find that she's not interested in you deciding to murder her friend's family in order to nebulously 'save' her life. You might lose her; just not from the thing you fear.”

And then the holo winked out, and Anakin was left fuming on the doorstep of the Temple.

 

* * *

 

The Temple burned.

Obi-Wan had managed to block the way while a few children were ushered out into the waiting care of Padmé and Bail, but those seven terrified lights were all that remained.

The horror that had painted these walls...

It was an evil that could never be scrubbed away.

Genocide. The entire annihilation of a people, and a unique way of life. The soft sobbing of a toddler, too young to understand why. The terror of an eleven-year-old who hadn't even had a chance to _live._

The anguish of a master who felt their padawan die, days earlier during the breaking of the clones.

Nothing could ever justify what had been done here. Obi-Wan knew it, and Padmé had made sure the galaxy did too.

He strode past the corpses of people he'd loved, Jedi and clone alike, all of them _robbed_ by _two_ men who valued _their things_ above all.

Anakin had wanted him to step out of his way or die quietly.

He would receive neither.

_You rip everything away from me to bolster keeping something you want._

He had freely, willingly, _without begrudging_ given his all to Anakin a thousand times over.

So Anakin expected him to accept this utter pillage of his soul with a word of forgiveness and understanding.

Enough.

Enough, to the man who thought other beings held less value because they couldn't fight back against his lethal bullying.

Enough to the man who thought he deserved to take what little others had to give himself more.

Obi-Wan had loved him. Still loved him, somehow, through the shards of his heart that cut his hands to ribbons.

He could sense no remorse from Anakin, though there had been tears and screams.

Those tears meant nothing to the children who bled out on the floor at his feet.

Those tears were worthless for anything that truly mattered.

Obi-Wan had no more tears to shed.

Qui-Gon had lifted the dagger from the dust and insisted Obi-Wan take it into his heart.

Perhaps it was not surprising, in the morbid scheme of the universe, that the knife had eventually decided it had gleaned all use from Obi-Wan it needed.

_You never saw me as a person, an equal of yours._

_You always saw me as a means to an end._

It hurt, to look at the creature he'd loved so much, believed in so deeply—

Anakin only displayed empathy when it suited him, and had so _swiftly_ tossed both Obi-Wan _and_ Ahsoka to the wolves.

Ahsoka.

Lying dead on Mandalore, Kix's blaster bolt through her head.

And yet Anakin felt himself not at all to blame, in any of this. No, the sacrificing _hero,_ him. The grieving warrior! _Forced_ by awful circumstance!

Obi-Wan found he did not have the strength to be angry.

He did not particularly wish to survive the coming confrontation.

He wasn't entirely sure Anakin would let him approach to _have_ it. He might order the clones to open fire.

As exhausted as Obi-Wan was from the days of battle...

He would hold out perhaps halfway down the corridor, and then fall riddled, the last corpse to hit with a resounding echo.

But footage of what happened here was out. It was spreading through the galaxy like a wildfire that simply _would not_ stay put out, no matter _who_ Palpatine put on the job of suppressing it.

The most pretentious of creatures who loftily declared the Jedi brought it _upon_ themselves were now staring into the eyes of a little girl who _clearly_ hadn't had the _chance_ to do any wrong. They knew her name. They saw her artwork hung up on the blood-spattered wall.

They knew she was a _person_ , just like _they had once been,_ and they watched as she was butchered.

Fire burned in Obi-Wan's soul.

Let another privileged creature, _untouched_ by the ravages of moral decisions where the right path was near impossible to discern and with mere seconds in which a decision had to be _made_ or lives would be _lost,_ let them _shut their mouths_ in shame.

No more cutting _away_ from the atrocity. No more pontificating and vapid platitudes, made by people who felt _good_ about themselves and somehow felt _even better_ about themselves by declaring the victims deserved their abuse.

_Frip you._

Obi-Wan had fought for _them,_ to give _them_ a chance at freedom and a future.

Now? They were just going to have to fight for _themselves._

It might be entertaining to watch.

Anakin commanded the troopers to stand down as Obi-Wan approached.

Anakin stepped out to meet him.

Those blood-stained eyes, the coldness that wrapped around him in the Force, that would warn all children, Force-sensitive and not, _away from him_ for the rest of his days...

This was not the precious nine-year-old Obi-Wan loved.

Obi-Wan no longer had the strength to battle this monster, drunk with the blood of those whose did not consent, but he intended to make his last action count, reverberating forward into all the rest of this creature's existence.

Obi-Wan threw himself open to the Force, to the overwhelming, consuming Cosmic Force, the voices of ten thousand murdered, and every clone who had ever fallen in this war, to every family who had lost a loved one on either side, he turned to them _all_ and offered to let them be _heard._

The combined wail of millions of voices shattered through his body and mind, driving blood from his nose, and Obi-Wan turned to the bond that the Force had led him to never cut.

Now he knew why.

Dismissing all his shields, he channeled the cries of the abused straight down that path and into the center of the new Sith Lord's being.

Obi-Wan felt it hollowing himself out, burning away everything he still was.

He leaned into it more.

He was done being silent.

He was done being bullied.

And if he was to die, the man who had done all of this to _all_ of them, would _never_ escape what it _meant._

 

* * *

 

The Force thrummed like the aftermath of a sonic charge. Fox, standing beside Palpatine, cocked his head to the side.

And then Vader was screaming, and Palpatine could hear _nothing_ over its noise in the Force. Not the future, not his own shouting, and not the Force's warning.

Though...

The Force might have chosen not to warn him at all.

 

* * *

 

Kenobi sagged to his knees, clearly dead. He leaked blood from every orifice in his head, and as he collapsed completely against the floor, the thud seemed impossibly loud in the Temple's gore-soaked silence.

The voice in Rex's head was silent. Memories that had been difficult to access came flooding back. He, too, fell to his knees, trembling as he realized what had been done to them. What Fives had tried to warn them of.

As he looked up and saw _his general,_ the man he had trusted, above all others...

The man who, upon seeing the vode helpless in the grip of the accursed voice demanding obedience, should have _kept them safe..._

And instead had ordered them to _kill the people they loved._

Rex didn't have a word for this kind of heart pain.

He definitely wasn't sure how any of them were expected to _survive_ it.

 

* * *

 

Vader's silent screams ceased, after a time.

The nose bleed stopped.

He felt normal.

On Coruscant, every clone's chip had been accidentally obliterated by Kenobi's last petulance, but in the end, it hardly mattered.

Fox had succeeded in killing the Emperor, but Vader had rather planned on doing so at some point anyway.

Rex actually managed to take the shot at him, a thing he hadn't been able to do to Krell.

The personal growth of a traitor.

Vader slammed his saber through the malfunctioning clone's heart, and slaughtered the few who couldn't get out of his way fast enough.

Some fled into the depths of Coruscant, others undoubtedly escaped the planet before Vader managed to return to the Senate building and command the lockdown of the spaceports.

None of it really mattered, as volunteers were happy to fill in the ranks, and these would-be heroes didn't bring the baggage the off-planet clones carried around them, that would resurface should the chips ever break.

Vader subdued the rebelling Empire. He retrieved his wife.

He ruled his Empire and made it _exactly_ how he wanted it to be. It was a bit bloody. For some reason, certain factions of the population took issue with the necessary cleanse of the Jedi from history.

Padmé didn't like it. Then again, Padmé didn't like anything. She nagged constantly, and putting up with it became less and less enjoyable.

He began to wonder why he'd been so intent on keeping her alive, when her children were clearly more important.

And even better: Mouldable.

So there came a day when he silenced Padmé, because it just didn't feel the same anymore, and there was no point in keeping her around indefinitely.

He wiped away the nosebleed that afflicted him fairly regularly, and he grit his teeth and learned not to believe in the hallucinations that made his life hell. The child with broken limbs crawling out of the floor, black fluid oozing from her lips, scrambling towards him, ripping open Vader's ribcage _._

Or Obi-Wan, simply standing near a window with his back to Vader, looking out at the sunset streaming in.

Kenobi always looked peaceful.

The others never were.

The clone, who would follow him throughout his journeys, limping behind, tears streaming down his cheeks, asking, “Why, General Skywalker? Why would you do this to me? To my brothers? If there was anyone I would have trusted with my brothers and I when we were most vulnerable, it _would have been you._ ”  
In the early days, the hallucinations had nearly killed Vader with the terror they inflicted, and the pain. Because that wretched little child clawing through his chest? That pain felt _damn real._ Oh, _Force_ did it hurt. The decomposing rat without the decency to stay silent in death.

As years passed, he began to realize that nothing he tried, no professionals he visited, could keep them away. Not Force-suppression, not _anything._

When Cody stumbled into his throneroom one day, stood before the throne, stared up at him, then placed his blaster to his chin and blew his brains up and everywhere, Vader was quite sure it was simply a new hallucination.

It was only when the droids began cleaning up that Vader realized it had been real.

But Ahsoka, crouching beside Cody, a hand resting on the fallen soldier's shoulder, head bowed in grief?

That _wasn't_ real.

 

* * *

 

Vader had the Temple destroyed down to the bedrock of Coruscant, a gaping hole so deep the bottom could not be seen with the naked eye.

Burned, collapsed, _destroyed._

It didn't stop the wails.

It certainly didn't stop the frequent visits of rotting corpses, demanding repayment or answers.

When Padmé started showing up, just standing there and _looking_ at him with that Force-awful disapproving _look,_ Vader decided he'd had _enough._

And yet...

It was something he could do nothing but endure.

Force _damn_ Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had reached out to every being who had ever been, or would ever be, hurt by Anakin Skywalker, and gave them voice.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Does compassionate-hearted Luke not survive the brutal Sith training Vader subjects the twins to? Yes. Does Sith Leia love only her brother, and no one else in the wide galaxy, and so take it upon herself to avenge her brother? Yes. Does Leia succeed in slaying her father in a rather gruesome way? Yes. And does being one with the Force mean Vader at last escapes from the ghosts?
> 
> Not really.


End file.
